Sharp, one of the panel providers of Apple, is reportedly developing small size Micro LED displays and will mass produce the products by 2023 for eye-wear smart devices, reported Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun. According to the report, Sharp Fukuyama Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Sharp, has developed Micro LED prototypes including a 0.38-inch full color panel featuring 1053 PPI and a 0.13-inch blue display with 3000 PPI. The company deploys its proprietary color conversion technology to achieve full color display and aims to mass produce the products in 2023 to 2024 for A...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a new article in Science Advances demonstrating a new design for LED that may overcome a long-standing limitation in the light sources' efficiency. The research team developed microscopic LEDs which achieve a dramatic increase in brightness as well as the ability to create laser light. Consisting of scientists from the University of Maryland, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, the team achieved 100 to 1,000 times higher brightness with LEDs...

Despite the interruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, the development of novel display technologies have to go on. At the virtual Display Week held last week, there were still several new Micro LED display exhibits showcased by worldwide experts. LEDinside selects a few innovations that cannot be missed. AUO AUO exhibited an integrated full color TFT driven Micro LED automotive displays with two 9.4-inch flexible Micro LED panels. Its S-curve shape enables the display to be mounted into automotive interior design. It also demonstrated a 12.1-inch Micro...

Kyocera and Osram reported worked on a new Micro LED display driving technology. According to a report of MicroLED-info, the two companies have designed a hybrid current and PWM driving technology for Micro LED displays. The new driving scheme can be used to avoid using lower pixel currents through Micro LED chips, as described by Kyocera and Osram. As a result, the approach reduces luminance deviation and color shift even at lower grayscale levels. The new driving technology was demonstrated with Kyocera’s 3.9-inch full color Micro LED display bas...

PMOLED panel maker RiTdisplay presented a Micro LED thin film display at virtual Display Week that took place last week from August 3 to 8. The company also indicated in its investor conference last week that it has begun sending sample of Mini LED products this year and the shipment is scheduled in 2021. (Image: screenshot from RiTdisplay's video) RiTdisplay has been collaborating with Micro LED company PlayNitride since 2019 to develop Micro LED displays. The two parties exhibited a few small size Micro LED display modules for wearable appl...

NS Nanotech, a LED materials company startup announced its first technical milestone with the demonstration of a nano-LED that promises to close the “green gap” in LEDs. The new LED technology is based on patented technology enabling fabrication of components that will be smaller and draw far less power than current LED solutions, while emitting brighter, more saturated, more stable, and more directional green light. The demonstration unit is now showing at the virtual Display Week until today. (Image: screenshot from NS Nanotech video) Seth C...

AMS and Ibeo Automotive Systems confirm that ams VCSEL technology is a core component of Ibeo’s new solid-state LiDAR solution, ibeoNEXT. Ibeo’s LiDAR system will be used in Level-3 automated driving on production vehicles at Great Wall Motor Company starting in 2022. The VCSEL manufacturing technology of ams allows for flexibility in layout design regarding number of pixels, their size and pitch, and specific addressability patterns. The VCSELs can differentiate in scan and flash applications as they are less sensitive to individual e...

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) from Taiwan continues to strengthen its Micro LED technology development. The organization joined virtual Display Week 2020 as well and presented its latest Micro LED breakthrough. (Image: screenshot from ITRI video ) ITRI showcased a flexible full color Micro LED display module at its online booth. The flexible Micro LED display sizes 60mm*30mm with a pixel pitch of 250 µm and a resolution of 240*120 (100 PPI). The display module is demonstrated as a wearable devices combining the Micro L...

Radiant Vision Systems, a subsidiary of the Konica Minolta group who experts in photometric imaging solutions for light and display measurement, announces that it will present a technical paper during the 2020 Display Week Symposium taking place online from August 3-7. Doug Kreysar, CEO of Radiant Vision Systems, will present the company’s paper titled “Fractional Pixel Method for Improved Pixel-Level Measurement and Correction (Demura) of High-Resolution Displays.” (Image: Radiant Vision Systems) The presentation will highlight the c...

As virtual Display Week goes on, Taiwan-based panel maker AUO announced its demonstration of advanced display technologies covering Micro LED automotive displays, Mini LED medical displays, a full range of gaming displays as well as display applications in smart retail and transportation. Pioneering the next generation display technology, AUO is showcasing a complete series of full color TFT driven Micro LED automotive displays. The 9.4-inch flexible Micro LED display developed jointly by AUO and PlayNitride is now integrated into a automotive display t...

The development of Micro LEDs, quantum dot (QD) displays as a next generation displays following LCDs and OLEDs are becoming popular. By reducing the chip size to less than 100 µm and 10 nm levels compared to existing LEDs, with high-definition, high color saturation, fast response and high reliability, it‘s performance surpasses conventional LCDs and OLED displays. These devices are also ideal for new applications such as AR/VR/MR/SR, automotive head-up displays (HUDs), micro projectors, and smartwatches, which are expected to expand the mark...

LG Display (LGD) announced that it is showcasing next-generation OLED technologies at Display Week 2020, which is holding online this week from August 3 to 7. LGD presented foldable and transparent OLED products including a 65-inch and a 12.8-inch rollable OLED, a 13.3-inch foldable OLED, 65-inch bendable OLED, and 55-inch transparent OLED with 40% transparency. These foldable, bendable and transparent OLED products are featured in the “Unlimited Design Freedom Zone” at LGD’s virtual showroom. (Image: LGD) LGD ...

Compound Photonics (CP) unveiled its IntelliPix™ Microdisplay Technology Platform for Micro LED featuring multiple video pipeline and system integration innovations addressing power optimization, latency, and bandwidth use with the aim to improve AR experience. (Image: Compound Photonics) CP focuses on Micro LED constant current technology platform with a MIPI interface that enables pixel-to-pixel uniformity in the emerging <5μm Micro LED display space for AR/MR near-eye applications. Given AR imagery, in general, does not fill the ...

A new study published by researchers at Tohoku University in Japan introduced a novel solution for realizing high speed light transmission via deep UV (DUV) LEDs. The results were published in Applied Physics Letters on July 22, 2020. The research team highlighted two major issues of using LEDs as light source for wireless communication. One thing is that faster modulation requires smaller device size but smaller LEDs usually lack power. Another issue is that both visible and infrared optical wireless communications can have significant solar interference. To av...

Improving performance of LEDs is a continuous task for researchers. A team consisting of researchers of Imperial College London introduced a method of embedding tailored meta-grid of nanoparticles to LEDs to enhance their light output and lifetime. (Image: Debabrata Sikdar, John B. Pendry, and Alexei A. Kornyshev) The method was published in Light Science & Application in July by Dr. Debabrata Sikdar, Prof. Sir John B. Pendry and Prof. Alexei Kornyshev from Imperial College London. They reported an alternative route for improving light extrac...

VueReal announced that its multi device cartridge structure enables faster population of a display with higher yield and higher alignment accuracy. Most applications such as displays require more than one sub pixels with different devices per sub pixels. In case of Micro LED display, red, green, and blue Micro LEDs are required for each pixel. Moreover, most of these devices are fabricated in different environments using different material sets for higher performance. The common approach is to transfer each device independently to a large substrate. For a 4K MicroLED d...

In the first half of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the world as well as the technology industry with various interruptions occurred in the supply chain. In April, LEDinside covered how Micro LED technology could still have a chance to grow despite the COVID-19 impacts on the industry. And now, we would like to share the breakthroughs of Micro LED unveiled during the first half of the year proving that developments of the technology have not stopped by the pandemic. Micro LED Wafer and Chip Improvements Researchers have been working on...

Apart from helping to improve eyesight, LED light is now used to restore hearing, according to a new study conducted by University of Göttingen, Germany. The scientists created an optical cochlear implant based on LED lights that can safely and partially restore the sensation of hearing in deaf rats and gerbils. Their design's light-based approach allowed it to deliver more accurate and pinpointed signals to auditory nerves compared with current implants based on electricity, which often suffer from poor sound quality. The technology also offers some improvements ove...

Two recent researches of LiDAR introduced new solutions to improve the sensing technology. The study by University of Colorado Boulder described a new silicon ship without moving parts or electronics that enhances resolution and scanning speed for LiDAR sensor. In addition, researchers from Purdue University and École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) unveiled their development with FMCW LiDAR. For the research of Univerity of Colorado Boulder aims to develop small chip to replace existing big LiDAR system. The research t...

Ushio announced that it has commenced production of the latest high-powered short-wavelength infrared (SWIR) LEDs, which achieves the world’s highest output power and efficiency. Low-power chips are mounted in SMT packages and moulded type LEDs; while with 1 mm2 high-powered chips, the SWIR D-Series can be mounted in EDC, SMBB, and TO-66 packages. For the majority of wavelengths, a two-fold improvement of output and efficiency is attained; however, the high-power versions have ramped up their forward current to 1 A and gain a boost of up to four times...

ALLOS Semiconductors announced its collaboration with Prof. Ohkawa and his team at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) for realizing high efficiency nitride-based red LEDs on large diameter silicon substrates. The collaboration will focus on solving fundamental issues like the large lattice mismatch and the quantum-confined Stark effect (QCSE) which limit the adoption of red nitride-based LEDs for practical industry usage. In particular, for the emerging field of Micro LED displays there is a strong demand to enable red LEDs on ...

Many leading LED companies across the world including Cree, Nichia and Osram see horticulture LED lighting a growing market with expanding applications. Apart from the well-known application of vertical farming supplementary lighting for greenhouses is also a major growing segment for horticulture LED lighting. A recent study published agriculture journal Agronomy demonstrated that LED lighting can improve yield and precocity of greenhouse tomatoes in the Mediterranean, where sunlight is considered sufficient comparing to other region. Researchers of the University o...

One critical issue of Micro LEDs is that their luminous efficiency decrease as their dimension shrink, leading to increasing problems in inspection and repair. Technology developers thus try to improve Micro LED efficiency at the phase of epitaxy wafer production. A group of researchers from UCSB, including Nobel winner Shuji Nakamura, recently published a paper describing the method of fabricating high performance InGaN Micro LED with epitaxial tunnel junctions (TJs Micro LEDs). Published in Optics Express, the paper, titled “Size-independent Low...

Researchers of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have been working on improve efficiency of red Micro LEDs and they recently announced the achievement of manufacturing stable red Micro LED based on InGaN. (Image: KAUST) A major challenge facing the development of Micro LEDs is to integrate red, green and blue light into a single LED chip. Current RGB LEDs are made by combining two kinds of materials with InGaP red LEDs and InGaN blue and green LEDs. "Creating RGB displays requires the mass transfer...

A research team led by Shin-Tson Wu, Professor from the College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, USA, conducted a comprehensive analysis on the current display technologies: LCD, OLED, Mini LED and Micro LED. The researchers analyze the performance of self-emitting Mini LED, Micro LED and OLED display, as well as Mini LED backlit LCD, evaluating the power consumption and ambient contrast ratio of each display in depth and systematically compared the dynamic range, motion picture response time, color gamut, and adaptabili...

The U.S.-based material supplier Coretec Group who focus on silicon-based materials utilizing Cyclohexasilane (CHS) development announced that it has filed a provisional patent with its CHS derived silicon. The provisional patent notes three LED applications that Coretec believes its CHS technology is suited for. The first application is the ability to create a cost-efficient, high intensity UV LED capable of killing COVID-19 and other microorganisms. As one of the existing challenges of UV LED is the limitation of reaching needed intensity light, C...

Self-driving technology startup Aurora announced its self-developed LiDAR sensor FirstLight LiDAR last week. The LiDAR sensor was tested on Aurora’s test vehicles to help the perception system to see and track objects farther, faster, and with greater precision. (Image: Aurora) Aurora acquired LiDAR company Blackmore last year eyeing the expertise of FMCW (Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave) technology. FMCW LiDAR delivers a constant stream of light and changes the frequency of that light at regular intervals. With the technology, Auro...

Vuzix, who focusing on smart glasses and AR technology, announced the recent granting of a series of patents and patents pending, focused on wearable computer and AR smart glasses. The company said that its patent portfolio has grown from 90 patents and patents pending to 166 over the last 36 months. Vuzix’ patent portfolio encompasses a range of IP including waveguides with holographic optics, laser and Micro LED display integration, fashion forward industrial designs and optics that support low cost single layer waveguides to multilayer large field of view solutions. ...

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada reported that they have created a new method to transfer and bond Micro LEDs onto flexible substrate. The approach is called “paste-and-cut” by the researchers and can selectively transfer GaN Micro LED from sapphire substrate onto flexible platforms. The results were published at Nano Energy in July, 2020. The research team unveiled their achievement of using the novel “paste-and-cut” approach to transfer and bound GaN Micro LEDs onto flexible substrate with demonstrated effectiveness. T...

Instrument Systems of the Konica Minolta Group introduces a camera-based measurement solution for Micro LED wafer testing that generates 2-dimensional, pixel-resolved optical analyses within given cycle times. The LumiTop 4000 has a resolution of 12 MP and can detect the smallest of defects and inhomogeneities on the wafer. Thanks to a 100 mm macro lens, the camera enables fast parallel inline analysis of all Micro LEDs on a wafer at a single test station. Micro LEDs are renowned for being an exacting new display technology. According to the latest definition of L...